Sunday, February 3, 2008

Daytrip to the Beach

Yesterday we woke up early, quickly ate some coffee and fruit for breakfast, and got on the Pista (freeway) to Play Hermosa. The road was really crowded because there was a huge concert going on in nearby Jaco. A lot of teachers from our school went to the concert, which featured Daddy Yankee as the headlining act, but we felt like relaxing on the beach instead of dealing with big crowds.We got to the beach at about 10:00, and the first thing that we noticed was the heat. This was our first trip to the Pacific in the dry season, and we were not ready for the burning sand and sweltering sun. The sand at Hermosa is really dark, and it became so hot that people literally had to run across it to get down to the water. Pretty soon we were ready for lunch, so we packed up our stuff and went to the jungle surf cafe for gallo pinto and mahi mahi sandwiches. Once were full and hydrated we headed back to the sand to relax and surf. The waves were pretty disappointing compared to some of our past trips to Playa Hermosa. Since there has not been any rain for awhile, there are not any good sandbars for the waves to peel off of, so instead they just closed out. The sun cooled down a little bit in the afternoon, but it was still so hot that we preferred to hang out in the shade of the palm trees instead of working on our tans in the sun. It was really pleasant to read, relax, and not worry about grading papers or teaching social studies lessons. At about 3:00 we loaded our stuff up and drove back to the city. We hit some major traffic just outside of San Jose, but we eventually made it back safe and sound. For dinner we went out to Samurai, our favorite sushi restaurant. We ordered a giant sashimi boat, with ahi, white tuna, octopus, squid, salmon, mackerel and sushi rolls. We stuffed ourselves silly, and when we were ready to go our waiter brought us a couple more Saporos on the house (he is the father of one of my students). After a fun day and a great meal, we went home and slept soundly.